Dale Lawrence will play a reunion show with the Gizmos on Dec. 29 at White Rabbit Cabaret. / Star file photo

Today marks the ninth installment of a series that looks at the top musicians, ranked in order, in Indiana history. The list includes representatives of blues, pop, country, hip-hop, R&B, rock, classical, jazz, Broadway and punk rock styles. Look for the No. 16 musician to be unveiled at 7 a.m. tomorrow.

The singer-songwriter played in the second version of the state’s first punk band, the Gizmos, and he’s led the Vulgar Boatmen through two decades of critical acclaim.

Born in 1956, Lawrence grew up in rural LaPorte County about 30 miles west of South Bend.

The Bloomington-based Gizmos issued a self-titled EP in 1976 -- predating recordings by the Sex Pistols and Ramones. The songs were flippant, funny and politically incorrect.

While attending Indiana University in 1977, Lawrence joined the Gizmos and played guitar on the band's 1978 EP, “Never Mind the Sex Pistols.” When the Gizmos made a split album with the West Lafayette-based Dow Jones and the Industrials -- a 1980 gem titled "Hoosier Hysteria" -- Lawrence served as primary vocalist and songwriter.

The Gizmos appeared as the supporting act when the Ramones played Bloomington on Dec. 5, 1979 -- a rare occasion in which the college town supported punk rock, according to Lawrence.

"The thing I always find hardest to get across is how foreign all this stuff was -- how uncool it seemed to the general populace. We were very much alone," Lawrence told The Indianapolis Star in 2000.

The Gizmos moved to New York, but that didn’t work out and the band broke up within a year. One of the Gizmos’ contributions to “Hoosier Hysteria” is a song titled “Rock ‘n’ Roll Don’t Come from New York,” featuring the line, “Thank God I’m from the country, I can teach you how to rock ’n’ roll.”

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Lawrence will play a Gizmos reunion show on Dec. 29 at White Rabbit Cabaret in Fountain Square.

By the mid-1980s, Lawrence was back in Indiana and writing songs with Robert Ray -- a professor at the University of Florida who led a band known as the Vulgar Boatmen. They collaborated via cassettes sent by mail, and eventually two versions of the Boatmen made live appearances: one based in Indianapolis and one based in Gainesville.

The Boatmen specialized in clean, refined pop-rock -- skittering along a rhythmic path established by Bo Diddley and later perverted by the Velvet Underground. The music press embraced two indie albums by the Boatmen: 1989’s “You and Your Sister” and 1992’s “Please Panic.” The band signed a major-label deal, but 1995’s “Opposite Sex” album was released only in Europe.

The Boatmen, who make sporadic appearances at venues in Illinois and Indiana, played on the final bill at Broad Ripple’s Patio nightclub in 2005, and the band opened for the Strokes as part of a memorable 2001 show at Birdy’s.

He said it: “In New York, we got lost in the shuffle and we felt that we were just playing in a void. In Bloomington, at least people disliked us,” Lawrence, telling The Indianapolis Star about the Gizmos in a 2000 interview.

About the series: The list of 25 top Hoosier musicians includes subjective selections by Indianapolis Star reporter David Lindquist. For this list, a “Hoosier” is defined as someone who helped shape the cultural identity of Indiana or someone whose identity was shaped by the state. Musicians will be revealed every weekday through Jan. 3.